


Epilonging

by Numina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 01:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numina/pseuds/Numina
Summary: Not exactly an epilogue to "Hermione Granger and the Past Picture Imperfect". An extra vignette for folks wanting a fuller sketch of the future. Contains spoilers for that story.





	Epilonging

A surface tension of silence had fallen over them when they’d left Neville’s office. They’d spoken easily enough in debrief to the headmaster about the battle, about Bella’s stratagem, likely goals, and probable resources. They'd all agreed it was highly unlikely that whoever had been promising her aid would be pleased with her outcomes, and the school could celebrate for one night at least. Practicalities were, as ever, easy for them.

He’d sat by her side at dinner, though his solitary air made that seem as incidental as Madam Pince sitting at her other side. He made polite-enough noises for the small handful of staff that took the chance of greeting him, but his louring weariness was so palpable that even Mr. Kalil was vanishingly brief in paying respects. Their standing to leave at the same time seemed likewise incidental, as did their choosing the same route once they were out of the hall, silence walking between them like a chaperone.

In truth, it felt like there was nothing she could say. She'd lost all sense of him and was reluctant to blunder about in the dark, afraid to hurt him, or to be hurt by him, by closeness or by distance, by wanting or not wanting, knowing or not knowing. The darkness around them in her mind opened far too wide, any of an uncountable set of choices laden with uncountable potential regrets. She couldn't navigate it alone. Indeed, if she were alone, there was nothing to navigate. So she said nothing, and intuited a consonant anxiety in his silence as well.

 _Practicalities, Hermione_ her mind whispered, _stick to the facts. Your hands can be where his hands are. He’s clever enough to maneuver if you frighten him. Give him an opening, let him give you a sign._

“I had a bed moved into the lab in the dungeon. You’ve got your choice of rooms with the staff shortage, obviously, but if you wanted someplace familiar, there’s plenty of room for tonight, and we can hash out the practical details later.“

He didn’t say anything, as seamlessly disinterested as a vision in a pensieve, but when she turned to descend the dungeon stairs he continued to shadow her, and when they got to the potions classroom he held the door open. He crossed to the next door much slower than she did, perhaps drinking in the small differences and odd similarities, swamped with ruminations, but once she’d unlocked the apartment door he entered without hesitation.

“There’s wine if you like. Or a little scotch...someplace. Bottom of that box, I think. Sorry, I don’t even know if you drink.”

He was looking over the bookshelves and shook his head, “As a general rule, no, but tonight I think...if you’re having one I’ll have what you’re having.”

His tone was civil, almost rote. She quashed the impulse to chatter like a hostess about the wine as she poured, the region and vintage, why she had that one to hand and not another, how she’d come to prefer whites over reds but happened to have a lovely rose’. She didn’t want to insist on smalltalk, or coax him into banter, resolving to treat him as if he was saying what he meant, in the hopes that he might start. She certainly didn’t explain why she was choosing the largest goblets, emptying most of the bottle evenly between them. She expected he’d take a sip and abandon the rest just to be difficult, but at least it would make the point that she desperately wanted him to loosen up just a little, and he'd have to clearly refuse instead of standing aloof. It felt grimly like strategizing over sparring with his painting, trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted with her.

She handed him one of the aggressively generous helpings, raising hers momentarily and, when he did not choose to toast, lowering it again and taking a lingering sip. It felt good, familiar, burning richly in her chest with nighttime ritual. She gestured to the chair by the fireplace, “Would you like to sit?”

He swallowed a dramatic mouthful and shook his head again, suppressing a gasp, “No, thank you. I’ve had quite enough of armchairs for a while.”

She smiled, hopeful, “Do you mind if I light the fire?”

He shook his head, impartial, “By all means.”

She crouched down by the grate, fussing over summoning wood, preparing it, lighting it, enchanting it, intentionally taking a long time in the hopes that he might begin talking, turning conversational gambits over in her mind in case he didn't. If it was to be like that first conversation, she deemed it best to establish the tone she actually wanted, rather than continually feeding pat niceties to his voracious indifference. She went to the chair herself and sat down while he continued to study the spines on display, “Do you remember everything? Both halves?”

He took another drink, slowly, and she noted with some alarm that he'd already downed half his goblet. He nodded, trying for wit but subsiding into a sardonic melancholy tinged with tipsy fatigue, “I do. I think I do. I wouldn’t remember if I didn’t.”

She sighed, biting back the impulse to maneuver or bait him. If he were simply exhausted it would be cruel, if he were being deliberately obscure it would yield nothing but more deflections. She did her best to let her most frank thoughts take shape, “I just want to know where you are. You’re being very quiet and...there’s a lot on your mind, I imagine...a lot I can’t even presume to...anyway, whatever it is you need...”

He nodded, tipping his head back and draining his glass, turning to face her with an inebriated bobble in his posture, “I think we ought to just get it over with.”

He stalked towards her precariously, fumbling the goblet off the corner of the table and letting it crash to the floor. He spared it an unintentional glance before re-centering on advancing towards her with grim determination.

She sat fixed, less out of fear than by the abstract fascination of watching him try to navigate the considerable space between them. She studied his face as he lurched stiffly towards her, seeing more of the boy she maimed than the man she’d once feared. She couldn’t see the scholar she’d dreamed with anywhere.

When it seemed like he was going to make it without falling, she stood up slowly, and smoothly drew her wand, “ _Arresto-”_

 _“Expelliarmus!”_ Even sozzled he was surprisingly fast, if not accurate, and the goblet flew out of her hand and crashed into the fireplace.

She sighed and lowered her wand, “Severus, stop. I can see you’re upset but I don’t understand.”

He lowered his wand as well but continued advancing upon her until they met, his free hand sliding under her arm and up into her hair, closing tight, bracing her mouth to his, stumbling forward until her back met the bookshelves. He kissed her, over and over in a silent ramble, and she let him, trying to listen. Though he might have begun with some larger nefarious ambition, he seemed to lose himself in kissing her. Gently she worked the wand from his hand, putting it and her own on a shelf, freeing her to stroke his cheek, and him to pull her waist against his.

“Easy,” she murmured between passionate mashings, “easy, you drank too fast. But I know you can stop, and so do you.”

He grunted and released her abruptly, pressing himself away, stumbling, “What was in that wine?”

She looked at him with dry scorn, “Wine.”

He scanned her expression, finding no lie, turning away with a grumble.

She thought of a number of gently imploring questions, sympathetic, coddling, but he was having some success in working her up, and she was tired, and cutting right to the point seemed to be the order of the day, “So, fucking? Is that what you want to get over with? Because that’s not what I meant when I invited you to stay.”

He turned and narrowed his eyes at her, returning her dry scorn, “Liar.”

She gasped, exasperated, “Severus for heaven’s sake. Yes, I want you, brilliant deduction, well done, but you’re obviously upset and reeling. I don’t blame you. It's been a ridiculous, unrelenting day. If you want to sleep or just...never see me again I think I’ve proved I’ll let you do that. How many times and ways do I have to say that I’m not going to keep you prisoner? I don’t want you to...fucking...service me.”

He rested a balled fist on the armchair, silent.

She sighed wearily, “We can talk about it, if you want.”

He turned over his shoulder, leaning into his inebriated looseness as he moved toward her again, though his tone had finally found an ounce of sincerity, “I am so...tired...of talking.”

She recognized the feeling and closed her eyes, nodding, catching him face-first as he pressed up against her again, accepting that perhaps he’d hit on the best way through their respective miasmata of hangups. It was no worse than any of the blindly disaster-laden options she'd thought of, and her mouth, at least, agreed hungrily. She tightened fingers in his hair and he moaned into her throat. She tried to relax, to blindly let alcohol and momentum carry her past her mounting anxiety. Her flesh was plainly aching to be pressed, tingling to be tasted, yearning for him like magnetic north. The only problem was a perspiration-thin barrier of prickling fear over her skin's entire surface, that subconscious stress-induced field in her waking life that made the prospect of being touched feel like needing to scream. Still, the weight of him, clothed, was good, the kissing was good, familiar and new all at once. If that was all he wanted, maybe…

His long fingers went to her collar and began unfastening buttons with a motion like a team of gazelles dropped into a goblin glassworks: swift and graceful and setting off every alarm imaginable. She caught his wrists, “Don’t.”

Reflexively he jerked against her hold and, in a single motion, turned his sinuous fingers to reverse the grip onto her, firm but not rough, “What.”

She blushed, hard, “I did tell you…” she glanced away, “I’m not really...I’m not at all like the person I...the person you...in our dreams. I have a hard time with being touched and this...I want you so, so much but at the same time...my body just...if you take off my clothes I’ll fall into a blind panic. I’m sorry.”

He studied her incredulously, his features softening slowly. He let go of her wrists and hesitantly touched her collar again. When she didn’t flinch he did up the buttons he had taken, “Don’t be sorry,” he stepped back, not turning away. The buzzing heat persisting in the air between them made her want to cry with frustration. Thankfully, she really didn’t have any tears left, like she'd used up her total allotment until the new year.

She sighed, hanging her head, “Listen, I’m going to take a long bath. You’re welcome to stay or to go...I do want you to stay, but I’ll understand, whatever you decide. You can have either room,” She moved past him toward the arch, and he followed her, “I mean, as far as I'm concerned they’re still yours, you’d never really vacated them when I moved in. If you find you need them for yourself and you need me gone, I can do that, just not tonight,” she gestured past him at the front room, “you’re welcome to anything you want from the shelves or the cupboard, or to rummage in the boxes and piles, really anything. I’ve got all sorts of books,” she smiled sadly, remembering, “and I think Minerva kept most of yours in the library archives, if you’d rather. The elves will happily...” she trailed off, shrugging.

He nodded mutely, looking back and forth between the two bedroom doors, considering.

Summoning the last of her courage, she stepped to him and caught his cheek in her palm, “And I know you don’t want to right now, but if you ever, _ever_ want to talk, no matter when or about what, I want that. I mean it. If I’m sleeping, wake me. If I’m teaching, interrupt. I know I’m not perfect, and I’m far from whole, but I’m _here_ ,” she stepped against him and pressed a kiss to his cheek, “and so are you. And I love that.”

He put his hand over hers, nuzzling into her touch, placing a lush kiss at the place where her wrist became her palm, lingering just a moment before turning away to the lab door. He pushed it open, decisively, and paused to look back. She started to say goodnight, but he spoke first, “ _Accio!”_ and his wand flew to his hand from the bookshelf. She nodded, bemused, and opened her mouth to try again but he cut her off again, pointing his wand into the lab at the stove, “ _Calidum balineum”_.

The sound of water gushing and an extravagant plume of steam billowed from the bathroom. He stepped out from the lab again, closing the door behind him, stepping to the bathroom door and opening it fully, “After you.”

Blood rushed to her cheeks but she couldn’t suppress a skeptical grin, “What?”

He looked down sharply, but she caught a glimpse of her scholer all the same, wounded and cautious but alive, present, and willing to stalk strange prey at her side, “It’s a huge tub. I promise I won’t touch you without direct permission and ample warning both...and I won’t press you...if you’ll promise me the same. Only I find I...can't bear to let you out of my sight yet.”

She nodded assent, still incredulous, “You want to take a bath?”

“I want to talk. You just said you would, anytime, no matter what else you’re doing,” he cocked an eyebrow with exaggerated venom, “Unless you were _lying_.”

She laughed, blushing furiously, “Alright if you insist. But we're both cowards. Who gets in first?”

Her weary scholar glinted with a spark of slytherin as he passed her, through the door and to the far side of the tub. The delicious steam entering the cold dungeon air made a bright gauzy curtain that lent an extra layer of voyeurism as he undid his cuffs, pulling and folding them back until he was bare to the elbows.

As she stepped into the bathroom, wrestling the door closed to contain the heat, he nodded deeply, passing her a turn, “Now you.”


End file.
